May 9, 2025

JIM TREACHER: Kuck Fanye — Antisemitism Is Going Mainstream.

Ever since Hamas butchered over 1,000 Jews on October 7, 2023, there has been an explosion of antisemitism all over the world. That cowardly massacre of innocent people was like a starter’s pistol, and now the antisemites are sprinting their asses off.

A few examples from just this week…

Columbia

Rioters trashed the Butler Library at Columbia University while students were trying to study for finals. The Jew-hating morons spray-painted slogans like “Columbia will burn 4 the martyrs,” and hanged signs like “Strike for Gaza,” “Liberated Zone,” and “Free Mahmoud.” Police made 80 arrests, which sounds like a lot, but I still want more.

And you know who did it? Not these guys.

The Dems still bring up Charlottesville, going on a decade later. Meanwhile, rich kids are trashing college libraries and other public places because they hate the Jews. But to the press, it’s not antisemitism unless it’s wearing a MAGA hat.

The Dems still bring up Charlottesville, going on a decade later. Meanwhile, rich kids are trashing college libraries and other public places because they hate the Jews. But to the press, it’s not antisemitism unless it’s wearing a MAGA hat.

As Seth Mandel noted last year, after October 7th, it was Charlottesvilles all the way down in Joe Biden’s America:

Hopefully, that’s changed under the new administration: Rubio: You’d Better Believe We’ll ‘Review’ Visa Status for Columbia’s Pro-Hamas Rioters.

In other words: Pro-Hamas Protesters Finding Out that 2025 Is Not 2024.

Posted at 1:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

WELL, THEY AREN’T WRONG:

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green 7

RIP: David Souter, the Last of His Kind.

Particularly after the “Borking” of Robert Bork in 1987 (led by Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden) brought ideological critiques of the nominees out into the open, Republican presidents adopted a strategy of looking for “stealth nominees” who had little paper trail of judicial decisions and academic writings to pick apart. Souter, nominated in 1990 to replace Brennan, was the ultimate stealth nominee, a soft-spoken, reclusive, colorless bachelor with no major red flags (from a liberal point of view) in his twelve-year judicial record, most of it on the New Hampshire state courts. George H. W. Bush didn’t set out to put a liberal on the Court, but he was willing to take the risk, and that left him vulnerable to staffers such as White House Chief of Staff John Sununu (Souter’s fellow New Hampshirite) who had a pretty good idea of what Bush was getting. Democratic interest groups gave Souter the generic Republican treatment, with the National Organization for Women printing “Stop Souter or Women will Die” buttons with an image of a coat hanger, but it didn’t fly, and he was confirmed 90-9. Even Biden voted for him; Ted Kennedy and John Kerry didn’t.

Souter’s subsequent liberal record on the Court — including voting to sustain Roe in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey — made his name a conservative rallying cry of “no more Souters.” The stealth nominee strategy came to an abrupt end in 2005 after conservative opposition forced George W. Bush to abandon Harriet Miers, his White House counsel with a scant paper trail, and instead send the Republican-controlled Senate the nomination of Samuel Alito, who already had a long judicial track record that included ruling on the Third Circuit in favor of the pro-life law struck down in Casey. It seems unlikely that either party will attempt anything like the stealth-nominee strategy again.

PJM’s Matt Margolis adds, “Souter also aligned with the Court’s left wing in Bush v. Gore—a decision that reportedly left him so upset he considered resigning. In 2005, he joined a controversial ruling expanding government power to seize private property, sparking backlash and even a failed effort to seize his own home in protest. He retired in 2009, and President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to succeed him.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 78

WHIPLASH: US weighs plan to slash China tariffs to as low as 50% — down from 145% — as soon as next week.

The Trump administration is weighing a plan to slash the 145% tariff on Chinese imports by more than half — effective as soon as next week — as top US and China officials head to Switzerland for high-level trade negotiations, The Post has learned.

Specifically, US officials are discussing a proposal to lower President Trump’s punishing levy on China goods to between 50% and 54% as they begin what promise to be lengthy talks to hammer out a trade agreement, sources close to the negotiations said.

Meanwhile, trade taxes on neighboring south Asian countries would be cut to 25%, the source added.

“They are going to be bringing it down to 50% while the negotiations are ongoing,” the source said of the trade tax on China.

There are almost too many moving pieces in these negotiations to keep track.

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green 79

DON’T FORGET YOUR UMBRELLA TOMORROW:

Posted at 10:35 am by Charlie Martin 69

GLOBAL MILITARIES TO STUDY INDIA-PAKISTAN FIGHTER JET BATTLE.

The aerial clash is a rare opportunity for militaries to study the performance of pilots, fighter jets and air-to-air missiles in active combat, and use that knowledge to prepare their own air forces for battle.

Experts said the live use of advanced weapons would be analyzed across the world, including in China and the United States which are both preparing for a potential conflict over Taiwan or in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters there was high confidence that Pakistan had used the Chinese-made J-10 aircraft to launch air-to-air missiles against Indian fighter jets.

Social media posts focused on the performance of China’s PL-15 air-to-air missile against the Meteor, a radar-guided air-to-air missile produced by European group MBDA (AIR.PA), opens new tab, (BAES.L), opens new tab, (LDOF.MI), opens new tab. There has been no official confirmation these weapons were used.

“Air warfare communities in China, the U.S. and a number of European countries will be extremely interested to try and get as much ground truth as they can on tactics, techniques, procedures, what kit was used, what worked and what didn’t,” said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“You have arguably China’s most capable weapon against the West’s most capable weapon, if indeed it was being carried; we don’t know that,” Barrie said.

I don’t think anybody really considers the French-built Rafale to be “the West’s most capable weapon.”

But the point stands about Chinese jets and missiles — the days of China making nothing but cheap copies are long over.

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green 202

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: You Know, a Letitia James Perp Walk Sure Would Be Fun to See. “The big difference between the current Department of Justice and the previous one is that it’s actually going after people who have broken the law, rather than just making things up to persecute political enemies. The Dems don’t see it that way, of course. They say that Trump is weaponizing the DOJ. They are known for their projection issues.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green 84

HMM: Trump eying Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for top prosecutor in DC.

President Donald Trump is strongly considering installing Fox News host and former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

The potential selection comes as Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday that Ed Martin, who is currently serving as D.C.’s interim top prosecutor, would not be taking the position permanently after losing support among top Republicans in the Senate.

An announcement about a new interim U.S. attorney could come as soon as Thursday, sources said. Sources caution that plans could always change and a decision is never final until publicly announced by the president.

She’d be good, but can she get past Sen. Thom Tillis?

Oh, and kudos to Tillis for his promotion by ABC News to “top Republicans in the Senate.”

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green 128

SKYNET SMILES: ‘It will probably lead to the end of the world’ — what tech bros really think about AI.

Sam Altman is one of the most powerful men there has ever been. He runs OpenAI, the lab that gave us ChatGPT. He’s just turned 40 and he looks like he was AI-generated to run a tech company: casual clothes, big salesman eyes, furrowed brows. He tries not to think too much about artificial intelligence turning on us, he has said. But if it does, “I have,” he told The New Yorker in 2016, “guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defence Force and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.” He also once said, “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there’ll be great companies.”

So we got that going for us, which is nice.

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll 50

ICYMI [VIP]: Thursday Essay: Skynet Might Be Fiction, But It’s Coming for Our Jobs. “Please note that Europe and the UK — which gave us the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith, English liberty, and the World Wide Web — aren’t even in the running. By the time the European Commission on the Correct Use of Foreign Things We Don’t Like But Still Need convenes its Third Plenary Discussion on Proper AI Regulation and Taxation, private firms in the U.S. and China will have made three more leaps.”

Posted at 8:07 am by Stephen Green 14

THE NEW ANTIFASCISM LOOKS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE OLD FASCISM: I Tried to Cover a May Day Protest. Antifascists Had a Problem With That.

Last week, I was hounded out of a protest by a pair of authoritarians opposing fascism.

Billed as a “May Day” rally on behalf of workers, the event, which began in Foley Square in downtown Manhattan, was one of dozens of such protests promoted by 50501. This one was organized by a coalition of unions and other progressive groups, including the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. I attended the rally and had spent about an hour interviewing participants and onlookers when the trouble began.

My questioning a DSA member about the idea that private ownership was the root of our nation’s troubles had evidently aroused the suspicions of a cadre of masked, yellow-vest-clad organizers bearing arrow signs reading “Right-Wing Troll,” which they then deployed to warn any future interview subjects from speaking with me.

Two of these people followed me doggedly, eventually driving me from the event to a nearby side street, where they continued to monitor me until I eventually whipped out my phone and made a contribution to the GOP.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green 53